Biomedical Approach to Health Promotion

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Biomedical Approach to Health Promotion

Advantages

  • Uses scientific methods, which are generally trusted by the public, as they are based on factual information.
  • Prevention and early detection of diseases is cheaper than treatment of a large number of cases of the disease.
  • Led by health professionals who are viewed as having the necessary knowledge to achieve positive results (top-down approach).
  • Highly successful examples from the past, e.g. the eradication of small-pox.
  • Can reach a large target audience, e.g. all women registered with a GP practice are offered screening for breast cancer.
  • Large scale prevention is better than a cure.
  • Preventative methods, like vaccinations, work effectively on most people.

Disadvantages

  • Focuses on absence of disease rather than on promotion positive health.
  • Based upon the medical definition of health where all bodily functions are working effectively, rather than the holistic view of health taking into account emotional or psychological well-being.
  • Encourages dependency on medical knowledge and compliance with treatments.
  • Removes the health decisions from non-professional people.
  • Some people may not fully understand why they need certain preventative methods or why they are at an increased risk.
  • Some treatments are difficult to access for reasons such as waiting lists.
  • Some strategies are easily ignored by some people, or people don't know about them at all, e.g. smear tests.
  • Some people may be put off by intrusive methods e.g. immunisations.
  • Treatments may not fix the root cause of the problem or it's long-term effects.

Evaluation

The short term evaluation is that the percentage of the target population being screened or immunized has increased. The longer term evaluation shows a reduction in disease rates and associated mortality.

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